After six years of impossible luxury and growth, Dubai’s unparalleled expansion (a quarter of the world’s cranes) revealed an infrastructure of unsustainability. The international crisis arrived onshore and leveled the economy, wiping out jobs and forcing its enormous expatriate population to flee. From white collar executives residing in mansions, to Pakistani workers subsisting in camps, the expatriates who called Dubai home quickly learned that the Dubai miracle was more of desert mirage as they negotiated pink slips, confiscated visas, cars and homes they could not pay for, and a country for whom they were, ultimately, a service class.